Social, cultural, financial, and academic challenges interplay and any one challenge can have a key impact on the academic success of a student. Identifying students with such challenges, also called “at-risk students”, is an important issue faced by academic institutions, especially since increased student retention helps more students graduate and generates more revenue for the academic institutions. However, many students are not aware of student retention or success programs, or might be hesitant to use such programs for a number of reasons, including inconvenience, intimidation and peer stigma. Leaving such programs solely to the discretion of students can be problematic. Likewise, assuming such programs are effective just because they exist is nonsensical.
Student success programs need to be effective at identifying at-risk students as early as possible, need to use multiple identification sources, need to make it easy for students to get help, need to make it easy for other people within the academic institution to help the students, and need to make it possible for administrators to track the students and the effectiveness of the program.
One possible solution for identifying at-risk students is to use a course management system. Course management systems, sometimes also referred to as Learning Management Systems, provide web-based access to teaching-and-learning content and services. Course management systems are used by most higher education institutions; however, not all of these institutions make use of the vast amounts of data collected by the course management systems. Course management systems typically keep records of course grades, assignment grades, exam grades, and other activities which a student might be involved in at the academic institution. Examining the course management data can help academic institutions identify students at-risk. For example, Purdue University pulls student data from its course management system, including student activities, student assignment grades for each course, exam and quiz scores, class absences, and missed assignments and inputs the gathered student data into a predictive system in an attempt to identify at-risk students.
Other possible solutions include GRADESFIRST and RETENTION ALERT. GRADESFIRST is a tool targeting the improvement of student retention rates and monitoring various student activities at an academic institution. Features of GRADESFIRST include early alert of at-risk students, appointment scheduling with reminders, attendance tracking, assignment tracking, tutor management, and various summary reports. RETENTION ALERT is a retention management system that allows for the tracking and monitoring of aspects of a student's education. A set of rules can be set based on the institution's preferences, such as a GPA range, or failing grades in a course or program of study, or the rules can be manually set by an institution administrator, an instructor, or an advisor. Student progress and trends can be analyzed with the system.
GRADESFIRST and RETENTION ALERT focus on providing tools for the academic institution's providers to help students succeed by identifying those students who might be at-risk. Neither system supports providing students with self-help services, which would allow students to take a proactive approach if a student felt the need for help or if the student wanted to take advantage of a service that might help the student get ahead.
Noel Levitz's RETENTION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM/COLLEGE STUDENT INVENTORY takes a more reactive approach to student retention since it waits for students to self-identify their needs and their keys to success. It consists of a survey administered to students, preferably incoming students or administered to students early in their college career, which asks each student about their academic motivation and receptivity to assistance. The results compiled from all data can be used by the student service providers, such as administrators, instructors, advisors, or student associations, to determine the best strategies to use in order to retain the students and ensure the success of the students throughout their academic studies.
Another example of a student retention system is EMT RETAIN, by HOBSONS. EMT RETAIN is a web-based, automated alert system, that also allows for communication between the administrators and the students most at-risk. Another service provided by HOBSONS is EARLY ALERT, which includes a survey to assess and address student challenges. This allows institutions to find areas to improve and to develop strategies and programs to help at-risk students. HOBSONS also provides a predictive modeling service that analyses the institution's historical data and builds statistical models in order to forecast student success and retention rates. The resulting data can also be used to compare year-on-year data that can be used to assess the effectiveness of additional programs and retention strategies and techniques. One of the deficiencies of this retention system is that the collected information or specific individual cases are not routed to a specific organization based on the problem identified by the collective data or a problem identified with an individual student.
MAP-WORKS is a student retention system by EDUCATIONAL BENCHMARKING. This system allows an institution to track a student's progress and to find at-risk students. Students fill out a survey, preferably on the third week of the semester. The survey data is compiled and sent to the corresponding staff/faculty at the institution. This allows the corresponding faculty/staff to intervene or contact the student based on the student's report and the student's progress. Students are flagged in the compiled data using three colors: red, yellow, and green. Students flagged as red are students who are at-risk, where there is a major concern and action needs to be taken. Students flagged as yellow are students for whom there is some concern, while a green flag means that there is no concern. The students at-risk can then be contacted and directed to corresponding school resources that can help them.
Examples of systems that help students schedule appointments with providers of the academic institution are ADVISORTRAC and SARS GRID. ADVISORTRAC is an appointment system targeting advisement and counseling centers. It allows students to set up appointments. The advisors/counselors can see the student's records online via a web interface. Similarly, SARS GRID is a scheduling system that can be used by advisors, counselors, and administrators of an academic institution.
CourseRank is an unofficial system used by Stanford which allows students to get information on classes, teachers, and to keep track of their academic requirements to manage graduation requirements. Students can rate courses, rate professors, and provide reviews on classes. This allows students to see the experiences other students have had with certain classes or instructors. The course planner allows students to plan ahead, to make sure they have taken all required courses, and if not, it provides suggestions for courses to the students. While such a system does help students manage their course requirements for graduation, and to assess classes to take and professors who have positive reputations, and consequently avoid those with poor reviews, the system does not target student retention, and it does not allow either the students or the members of the academic institution to identify and address issues which might be negatively affecting a student.
As noted above, several systems that provide partial, possible solutions to the student retention problem have been proposed. Some focus on analyzing usage data of course management systems and other student information systems in order to identify and make informed decisions to improve the performance of the academic institution. Passive monitoring of student scores on standardized or placement tests as well as course grades has also been proposed. Some systems also propose the comparison of aggregate data with other academic institutions. For examples see U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,311,524, 7,512,627, Published U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 10/106,575, and 10/870,099.
All of these systems provide partial solutions. Even if these systems are combined, they do not provide a comprehensive suite to address the problem of student retention. Rather, the various systems follow one-sided models, where the students either help themselves, such as by filling out a survey, or members of the academic institution take action on behalf of the students, such as the manual flagging of students who might be at-risk, but no system provides a comprehensive solution that is effective at identifying at-risk students as early as possible, uses multiple identification sources, makes it easy for students to get help, makes it easy for other people within the academic institution to help the students, and makes it possible for administrators to track the students and the effectiveness of the program.